[Nancy by Rhoda Broughton]@TWC D-Link book
Nancy

CHAPTER XXII
5/15

Ben Jonson must have known some one like her when he wrote: "Have you seen but a bright lily grow Before rude hands have touched it?
Have you marked but the fall of the snow Before the soil hath smutched it?
Have you felt the wool of the beaver Or swan's-down ever?
Or have smelled of the bud of the brier, Or the nard in the fire?
Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
Oh so white, oh so soft, oh so sweet is she ?" But all the same, having a bonnet on, she is distinctly less like Palma Vecchio's St.Catherine, to which in my talk with Frank I compared her, than she was bareheaded this morning at breakfast.

Who in the annals of history ever heard of a saint in a _bonnet_?
"I wish that people might be allowed to go to church without their bonnets these hot Sundays," I say, grumblingly.

"_You_ especially, Barbara." She laughs.
"I should be very glad, but I am afraid the beadle would turn me out." "For Heaven's sake," says Algy, gravely, putting back his shoulders and throwing out his chest, as he draws on a pair of exact gray gloves, "do not let us make ourselves to stink in the nostrils of the inhabitants by any eccentricities of conduct, on this our first introduction to them.
If we consulted our own comfort, there is no doubt that we should reduce our toilets by a good many more articles than a bonnet--in fact--" (with an air of reflection), "I shudder to think _where_ we should stop!" We are in church now.

I have run the gantlet of the observation of all the parishioners, and have been unable to look calmly unaware of it; on the contrary, have grown consciously rosy red, and have walked over hastily between the open sittings.

But now I have reached the shelter of our own seat, near the top of the church, with all the gay bonnets behind me, and only the pulpit, the spread-eagle reading-desk, and the gaudy stained window in front.


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